Patricia’s Poetry Pick No. 1
-Frank O’HaraToday I happened across Frank O’Hara’s 1954 poem, “On Rachmaninoff’s Birthday". O’Hara is one of my favourite poets of all time, and I often return to his poetry in moments when I am feeling nostalgic for NYC. Today is one of those days.
Unless you’re reading this post on April 1, today is probably not Rachmaninoff’s birthday. That doesn’t matter to me though, and didn’t matter to Frank. This is the second of seven distinct poems with the same title written over the course of O’Hara’s all-too-short life.
Here’s another one from a couple years later.
O’Hara was a Rachmaninoff enthusiast through and through. O’Hara was a gifted musician himself, and had ambitions to become a concert pianist. He actually went to Harvard as a music major, but switched in the eleventh hour, completing his degree in English Lit. Rumour has it O’Hara took a lesson with Rachmaninoff who told him his hands were too small for “ultimate success”. Luckily for us, they were just the right size for a pen.
“It is of no great moment, I suppose, but Frank seems to have been confused about or uncertain of what day and month the great Russian composer-pianist’s birthday fell on...I don’t know what to make of this — do you?”
